Hello! Seiiti Arata. Does exposing yourself to the internet help or hinder you when it comes to getting a new job or having a salary raise? You must have heard the advice that you should be careful with your exposure on the internet, that you should take care of your privacy, that you should not make your life public.
But you can use your exposure on the internet positively, as a kind of showcase for your best work, as an extension of your resume. At the same time, you need to learn not to improperly publish content that you may end up regretting later. Thus, you can increase your salary, get a new job and be more valued in your profession.
It is possible to use your exposure on the internet strategically to have benefits in your professional career. But, for that, you must think about the results of searching your name on the internet in a very strategic way.
You should expose yourself on the internet to raise your value as a professional. Being on the internet is how you become relevant in your professional area.
When you want to buy something, what do you usually do? If you’re like most people, you open your browser and search the internet for that item.
You open some search results, look at the prices, read the reviews of the people who bought that thing. Then you use that information to decide whether to buy and where to buy that item.
Just as you do this to buy an item, companies and consumers search the internet when they want to find a professional. When opening a selection process, human resources professionals are not just receiving resumes and doing interviews. At some point during the selection process, you can be sure that searches about your name will be done.
And there is nothing wrong with that. The company that seeks to hire a professional wants to know what is said about that person on the internet, what that person has been publishing, what they make public on social networks.
Now imagine the following scenario. A selection process went through the resume analysis phase and the interview phase and reached three final candidates for a vacancy. The three have more or less the same qualities and weaknesses.
Then the person in charge of the recruitment searches the internet with the three names. The first candidate has almost nothing on the internet. He has no profiles on social networks, he hasn’t posted anything anywhere, there is nothing to read about him, neither good or bad. The second candidate has open profiles on social networks. There, the recruiter finds personal, leisure and family photos. But nothing about the candidate’s professional life.
The third candidate, on the other hand, has a profile with a well-built resume on Linkedin, a YouTube channel where he shows the results of some works he has already done and even a blog where he publishes texts about his professional area.
Which of these candidates do you think would be most likely to win the job?
The best way to protect your privacy is to control publications about your name. Staying off the internet is no longer an option.
The main argument of those who say that you should not expose yourself on the internet is due to the issue of privacy. These arguments claim that you should not publish your personal life on the internet to maintain your anonymity.
The point is that if you decide to stay off the internet, you won’t be able to control what they publish about you. Nor will you be visible for possible opportunities. Your name will not appear as an option in recruitment processes, it will not appear as a possible source of interview to the press, it will not appear to be called at events.
That’s why you need to optimize the results by searching for your name. The ideal is to have results related to certificates, courses, reports, commissions, associations, opinions, articles and everything else that can enrich your curriculum and improve your image.
This can be done either using specific websites, such as LinkedIn or Researchgate or Github, taking care of your publications on social networks and your comments on websites in your niche and in news sites in general.
Take over the searches for your name. Expose your qualities to those who are looking for you.
Let’s do an experiment right now. Pause this video and do a Google search for your name. Do it now.
What did you find? Are the search results about you or about other people with the same name? Do the results about you show your qualities or your weak points? If you were a company looking to know about your professional behavior, what impressions would you have? What image are these results giving you as a professional?
What you need is similar to what we call SEM or Search Engine Marketing. This is a marketing modality that seeks to improve search engine results. So, in your personal case, the search results page for your name should be dominated by yourself. Your professional profile should appear on your Linkedin, your blog or personal website, your YouTube channel. There should be interviews that you gave to the press, events that you participated in, publications that you wrote.
This can only be done if you intentionally decide to expose yourself more on the internet. When we talk about exposing yourself, this does not mean exposing your personal life, your intimacy or your opinions on controversial topics unrelated to your profession. But exposing your professional profile, the jobs you did, the difference you bring to the world.
When you intentionally decide to expose yourself more on the internet, you can strategically maximize your qualities and minimize your defects. You should think about everything you would like to include in your resume and make sure that, when your name is searched for, the information that benefits you will show up.
This must be a strategic job. For example, let’s say you took a course at an institute that doesn’t have a well-positioned website in search engines. How to bring this information positively to the internet?
You can write an article to publish on your blog or on third-party websites saying that you went to that institute, that you took the training, that learned such a thing. You can post photos on your social networks or at the institute or using what you have learned at the institute. You can make a slideshow, record a video explaining what you have learned and post it on sites like YouTube and SlideShare.
In addition, when you are going to make a publication about your professional area, at least you will have to study a little about what you are talking about. Teaching is proven to be one of the best ways to learn. Even if no one sees your publications at the beginning, just the fact that you prepare to make these publications already contributes to making you a better professional. If you don’t know what kind of content to create, then simply document your own learning journey.
As a result, you can receive new job offers for a better job. With these proposals, you can ask for a better salary using the techniques we teach in the Double Your Salary course. Or you can simply switch jobs and explore new opportunities.
You must expose yourself strategically. The better your exposure on the internet, the better your professional opportunities.
A few centuries ago, when cities were small and the means of communication were not evolved, everyone knew what you were doing. The people in town knew that Alice was a doctor, that Daniel was a lawyer, and that the engineer was named Gabriel. At that point, there was little privacy.
When cities grew, that kind of knowledge was lost. If someone wants to look for a doctor, a lawyer or an engineer, they will probably look for it on the internet. Even if they receive a recommendation, people will probably search the professional on the internet before contacting them.
So, you may be losing money and professional opportunities when deciding not to make a strategic exposure on the internet. Of course, you don’t need to have a channel with millions of subscribers, a popular blog or become a digital influencer.
What you need is simply to appear in relevant searches about your area of work and your location. You don’t even have to worry about it so much. If you make quality publications with your name and your area of expertise, the social media search engine algorithms will end up showing these publications to relevant people close to you.
This type of controlled exposure can even be the beginning of new professional opportunities. In many management and executive positions, companies like to hire professionals who are recognized in their area of expertise.
The opportunities are many, but they will only be available to those who lose their fear of exposure and decide to be present on the network in a controlled manner.
Even with some problems that only those who expose themselves on the internet know, the benefits of having a controlled and strategic exposure on the internet far outweigh the harm. For that, all you have to do is be willing to learn how to improve your communication, your personal marketing, using efficient techniques of negotiation and promotion.
You can start today to put yourself on the internet. You have already done a search with your name. Now start thinking about how you can dominate this search results page. Start analyzing your social networks with the eyes of a human resources recruiter.
Once you have a better presence, you can use the techniques taught in the Double Your Salary course to get a better pay in your company. If you want to see a special class on how to find out exactly what to do to get promoted and receive higher salaries, visit this link right now